I’ve really been enjoying Dragon-y Tarkir (note: significantly more dragon-y than Dragons of Tarkir). Even though I’ve been doing *a lot* of losing, and my boys in Abzan are just getting mauled, there’s great gameplay and I’m just a sucker for the flavor/art. That said, I did stitch together a very *very* low to the ground, unique-feeling deck.
Boros aggression is one of the top decks in the format, feasting on the durdling 5-color decks and the slower value engines. But it does most of its work with Mobilize tokens, the Salt Road Packbeast and key uncommons. Not this.
It’s true, everyone is alive and doing well. It’s just that between keeping daughters alive and fed and… everything else, something had to be pitched overboard. And when given a choice between (sporadically) playing Magic and (sporadically) blogging, I chose the former. But look! Proof of Life of Lil Chandra & Narset, set to the college of photos against our cherry tree in blossom. #symbolism.
It’s a difficult trade-off between zooming in on the tiny humans or capturing the cherry blossoms, but I guess that’s parenting for you.
For my birthday, I was able to put together a 6-person test run of my Introduction to Draft cube! It was incredibly fun with some truly nasty combos put together by my degenerate friends (I went 0-3, thanks for asking). But I realized that my tokens were woefully under-curated. So, for the “major tokens” (we don’t really have to worry about 1/1 Goblin Wizards, 4/4 Beasts and other one-offs), here are the Best in Slot for each.
The good news is that we are still alive with the same number of children. The bad news remains the same: the precipitous decline in free time results in a pretty hard choice between occasionally playing a game of magic versus writing about Magic. I’ve been reduced to Bo1 on the Arena phone client, THAT’S how desperate I’ve become.
But after the somewhat disappointing Wilds of Eldraine (mostly due to high expectations of how much I loved OG Eldraine) it’s time to dust off the old card evaluation skills. Since I love drafting “The Hard Way”, picking out the best commons can be a big help in finding the open lane. Usually these are efficient removal and solid 2-3 mana cost creatures. Recently though, Wizards has been doing a good job of seeding ‘glue cards’ that might not look that powerful, but every deck desires. Let’s see what we can find.
I’ve been neglecting some of the updates as there has been just a bounty of delicious, delicious art from a bunch of sets. Best of all, there’s been tons of great full art options to review.
It turns out that when given the choices of playing Magic, blogging about Magic, and interacting with a second child, it’s a classic “Pick Two” situation. I’ve been able to sneak in a fair amount of March of the Machine, but it’s been all Bo1 and 99% on my phone as Lil Narset has claimed the office for her own bedroom. I snuck in one final draft before LotR released and boy howdy it was a doozy. I had the good fortune to open Elspeth… and then a beautiful BW Phyrexian deck flowed to me.
For a few years now, when baking a Dutch Baby pancake, they would stubbornly refuse to rise. It was equal parts vexing and infuriating, especially given how long the anticipation can build between pre-heating the oven, baking, and finally digging into a fluffy, lemon-and-powdered-sugar confection. I tried everything: different heat, different pans, fresher flour, more/less eggs, etc. etc. All to no avail. Until I heard the craziest thing ever.
I know I didn’t come up with the pun, but I the shorthand of “all will be 1-drops” is a useful heuristic. Either be fast, or have an answer for fast, but don’t durdle around and then complain when you get trucked. I actually liked this set quite a bit, with one big asterisk.. It felt like a compressed version of the full game, some super memorable games. Including a shocking number of times where I (or opponent) juuuuust nicked the 10th poison counter while sitting at 1 life. Fun times!
Trophies
Even by my standards, that’s a hilariously consistent set of trophy decks. Two UW, three (!) RW, and two RG. Not a swamp to be a seen, and not really a control deck to be see either. As a result, my “Most drafted” are going to be extremely predictable.
Most Drafted
Commons
Why yes, I did love the artifact aggro decks. Why do you ask?
Uncommon
Still with the artifacts! Why leave a winning strategy?
personal lessons
I felt like the gameplay in ONE left very little room for error. Games were short and tight and frankly very very evenly matched. A suboptimal use of mana on turn 2 or 3 could very easily be the difference between winning and losing. Missing an opportunity to attack, bluffing a combat trick, could be the margin. I can play sloppily, trusting on a strong deck to draw me to victory. But there are edges–and leaks–everywhere.
overall record
Bo3: 58%
Bo1: 61%
Summary
I wouldn’t want Magic to always feel like ONE, but I appreciated the variety. Mulling aggressively to ensure early plays, charting out turn-order to optimize mana efficiency, always be aware of the board state and the math of racing… these are fun skills! I think that the “blue control deck” was a late emergence made the gameplay a little more monochromatic than it had to be. Ready to move on, but I would gladly draft it again and take those low, cheap aggressive artifact creatures. Math is for blockers!
Ben Stark was on Limited Resources with a very interesting thesis: there is a solid blue control deck lurking somewhere in All will be One. Blue is widely derided as the worst color and it is performing very poorly in the 17Lands stats. Yet it’s commons look like everything a control player could dream of. What’s going on here?
Benalish Dad 